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Arias lawyers seek change of venue for penalty retrial

PHOENIX -- Defense attorneys for convicted killer Jodi Arias filed a motion Tuesday asking that her retrial for sentencing be moved to another venue because of the notorious publicity surrounding the case.

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Arias lawyers seek change of venue for penalty retrial

Judge Sherry Stephens was unable to set a new date for the penalty phase in the Jodi Arias trial in light of several new motions that have since been filed.
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Michael Kiefer, The Arizona Republic
5:07 p.m. EDT August 27, 2013

Jodi Arias was convicted of killing her lover in May, but the jury could not agree on whether to sentence her to death or life in prison.

Jodi Arias stands as the jury is excused as the sentencing phase of her trial was declared a hung jury in Phoenix on May 23, 2013. Arias was found guilty earlier in May of murdering her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.(Photo: (Gannett, David Wallace, The Arizona Republic)

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Attorneys also want live TV coverage prohibited during the sentencing retrial

The defense team thinks media coverage and publicity deny Arias the right to fair trial

Delay in pretrial procedures makes it unlikely retrial will start by end of September

Arias' defense team said research indicates that 70% of the media coverage in Arizona of the first trial took place in Maricopa County. Her attorneys also want live TV coverage prohibited for the retrial.

In May, Arias, 33, was convicted of first-degree murder in the June 2008 death of her lover, Travis Alexander. Alexander, 30, was found dead in the shower of his Mesa, Ariz., home, with a slit throat, a bullet in his head and nearly 30 stab wounds. Arias admitted killing him, but claimed she acted in self-defense.

That same jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision on whether to sentence Arias to death or to life in prison. And since the Maricopa County Attorney's Office has so far refused to lift its intent to seek the death penalty, she must go back to trial in front of a new jury to decide the life or death question.

Arias was in Maricopa County Superior Court briefly Monday morning, but Judge Sherry Stephens told the attorneys that she had not had time to decide on the other motions before her in the case, and so she set a date of Sept. 16 to hear oral arguments on the matters.

Stephens had hoped to bring the case back to trial by the end of September, but the delay in pretrial procedures makes that goal more unlikely.

The defense attorneys, Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott, have three other motions before the court, all of which have to do with media coverage and undue publicity, which they feel denies Arias the right to a fair trial. Coverage of the trial went viral, through live-streamed broadcasts of day-to-day hearings and an aggressive national TV audience and social media, including blogs, Facebook and Twitter that brought interest and obsession from around the world.

One of the defense motions asks that the attorneys be provided the Twitter handles of any future jurors, since it came to light that at least one of the jurors in the first trial had been in contact with a journalist through Twitter and was copied in Twitter exchanges about whether Arias had a bad temper because she is part Hispanic.

Nurmi and Willmott also filed motions to allow them individualized questioning of prospective jurors to assess how much they have already been influenced by media coverage, including a made-for-TV movie with many fictionalized scenes that has aired several times. The movie, for example, suggests that Arias killed Alexander after finding a message from another woman on his phone; that she sent Alexander photos of herself having sex with another man; and that she once followed him into a mens' room in Las Vegas; none of those incidents actually took place, but they have been regarded as truth by some movie viewers.

The defense attorneys also asked that live television coverage be prohibited during the retrial, citing the fact that the defense attorneys and some defense witnesses were harassed and threatened by people after the trial through those media.

Two witnesses, a domestic violence expert named Alyce LaViolette and Patricia Womack, a former friend of Arias', refused to testify during the sentencing portion of Arias' first trial and will not participate in the retrial because of threats made against them by the general public.

The Arias publicity has affected media coverage of two high profile murder retrials in Maricopa County Superior Court -- one judge banned TV cameras and the other judge does not allow the use of electronic devices in her courtroom.

Arizona law, however, generally comes down on the side of the media, especially regarding cameras in the courtroom.

"No case in Maricopa County in recent memory has attracted more interest than the Arias trial," said David Bodney, a First-Amendment attorney who represents The Arizona Republic, KPNX-TV, Phoenix and other media outlets.

"The defendant's attempt to ban camera coverage would effectively deprive the public the opportunity to observe the sentencing phase of this case. A viewer blackout would thwart the public's ability to follow the Arias trial to its conclusion without any corresponding benefit to the parties or the process."